[Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 07/13/2020)

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FoodChainGoblins
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

Tzoulis wrote:
4 years ago
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
DRS is dying to bolt, while astrolabe does not and redraws a card. Listen, i would be perfectly fine if they banned Astrolabe and then reprinting it in MH, without it drawing a card off of it.
"Dies to removal" is not in any way a reasonable counter argument to the viability of a creature. We've said multiple times that DRS is way more powerful than AA and is actually a color pie break, since it can slot in non-Green decks. Its nickname of "1 mana Planeswalker" is a testament to how absurdly powerful it is.

Astrolabe enables fair decks, by letting them answer a broader metagame spectrum. It also makes Blood Moon weaker. That's it. Astrolabe is almost 1 year old and the only non-fair decks that played it were Whirza, Breach and Paradoxical lists.

There's no reasonable comparison to be done between them, other than maybe popularity.
I think people need to get over the stigma attached to Deathrite Shaman. Yes, it caused some serious problems in Modern many (what, 5?) years ago. It certainly needed to get banned or Jund's new amalgation (and BG Tec Edge) would continue to be too good. And yes, it got banned in Legacy, which is a format in which there are 5 cards in the graveyard minimum at the end of turn 1 for both players.

But guess what? Modern has gotten stronger. When someone actively considers a way to attack Arcum's Astrolabe, they can't. Attacking it is a losing proposition. Can you attack Deathrite Shaman? Yes, you can with removal, which has been much weaker in Modern ever since 2016. I personally don't see Deathrite Shaman doing anything more busted than Emry, Lurker of the Loch. I've done Engineered Explosives for 4 turns straight when my opponent didn't have ... removal. Deathrite Shaman is played in many decks. This is very true. It is a fair card. There is no strategy trying to win the game before turn 4 that would utilize Deathrite Shaman. That is the truth of the matter.

But I digress. I do not think that Deathrite Shaman is an acceptable unban right now. For someone to do turn 2 (first half of Uro) without losing a single resource is not something people want to see. Gilded Goose doing it at least requires the Goose to make another food later on to keep the Goose useful is a cost. There are many other weaker cards that could be unbanned, but mostly people don't care because they probably wouldn't do much or have stigmas attached to them.

*People see a card like this -
1. "Green Sun's Zenith is on the ban list. It is a busted card and leads to turns 2 to 3 wins. It is too consistent and would force most decks to play Green. It is on the same list as Oko, and therefore it also is broko"
2. "Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is NOT on the ban list. Therefore it is fine. It is legal, just like Tarmogoyf, T3feri, and even Unsummon."

I don't think that this ^ is an acceptable way to look at cards.
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Post by Aazadan » 4 years ago

TheBoulderer wrote:
4 years ago
I have to talk about Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy here. This card clearly shows that when designing new cards, WotC is completely, 100% ignoring modern.

This card makes Astrolabe into a cantripping mana dork, Mox Amber into the best MTG card ever printed, Guilded Goose, etc. We will have games like T1 Astrolabe, T2 Kinnan + Mox Amber, Tap Mox for UU, Astrolabe for GG, cast Uro/T3feri/keep mana up for Archmages Charm ON TURN TWO. Start T3 with 6 mana, 5 if you miss your landdrop. That equals a 3drop + Mana Leak or Urza + Mana Leak.
Knowing WOTC couldn't resist themselves in making low CMC legendaries, cards like this are why I got foil Mox Ambers the moment they were printed and bottomed out. That said, I'm ok with this for the moment, we'll see how long I remain ok with it though. It's the sort of thing that needs a critical mass of cards to work consistently, but once it has that it will be ridiculous.

I'm also getting a bit interested in the idea of casting a titan, and then in response to the sacrifice trigger, tapping the Amber. Seems to have the best synergy with Kroxa due to costing a mere 2 mana. Essentially reducing it to costing just 1, though Oro is in the better colors for this plan.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Aaron Forsythes analysis that UWx was doing well during the days of KCI (in a time which was totally acceptable to run main deck RIP and Stony Silence) shows his utter disconnect from reality and ability to understand even the basic make-up of a Modern metagame. He and Blake Rasmussen are so far removed from the players of these formats, it's honestly terrifying. The only reason UWx is good now is because of broken green cards and a mana-fixing, cantripping artifact.

In other news, this popped up on my feed today:

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Jeskai was not only viable and Tier 1 during 2018, but had the 3rd-most Modern GP Top 8s. Maybe you don't remember the period well enough. I don't know if you were participating in mtgs or playing Modern, but Jeskai was so good, we all collectively agreed T5feri is the card that finally makes Jeskai Tier 1 for the months to come. If you were indeed playing, it seems weird to me that you don't remember it.
In fact, I remember multiple Modern GP's where Jeskai top 8'ed, top 16'ed. This should basically clean any clouds in the first half of your post, where you claim Jeskai was not viable/Tier 1.
This window was brief, but other than pre-Eldrazi, and maybe now, this was the best Modern has been.

Any format where creatures, and decks which kill creatures, are playable (Spirits, Humans, UWR) is going to at least be passable, its unfortunate however that that format did not last.

It was indeed Big Teferi that allowed for the best brief period of Modern we have had since Twin was banned.

Outside of that however, until well, now, with Uro, Modern's been unbearably bad.

In other news, I hope to see some 5-0's out of this.

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Post by Tzoulis » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
1) Jeskai was not only viable and Tier 1 during 2018, but had the 3rd-most Modern GP Top 8s. Maybe you don't remember the period well enough. I don't know if you were participating in mtgs or playing Modern, but Jeskai was so good, we all collectively agreed T5feri is the card that finally makes Jeskai Tier 1 for the months to come. If you were indeed playing, it seems weird to me that you don't remember it.
In fact, I remember multiple Modern GP's where Jeskai top 8'ed, top 16'ed. This should basically clean any clouds in the first half of your post, where you claim Jeskai was not viable/Tier 1
Right, I'd forgotten about Nahiri Jeskai...

It fell to the wayside because it proved to be sub-par to other Control decks, namely Miracles. That still doesn't change the fundamental of Jeksai Control being a flawed concept. 4 Field of Ruins are MUCH better than Burn, and the combination of Terminus and Verdict is what kept UW dominant in the 2nd half of 2018. Yes Jeskai was good, the same way Grixis Control was good during the summer of 2015. Which is to say it was a meta call, a popularity surge because of a few players, then slowly died off and/or a newly printed card held potential. We've seen these blips before, we just saw it with Breach.
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
In fact, I remember multiple Modern GP's where Jeskai top 8'ed, top 16'ed. This should basically clean any clouds in the first half of your post, where you claim Jeskai was not viable/Tier 1.
A short period of a few months where it was "good" in no way retracts from my post and my points. As I said above, it's the same way as Grixis Control in 2015 or Breach being the new most broken deck in Modern in the past month. If it does not see continued success for a large period of time, then the deck was one or more of the below things:

1. Extremely popular, which enabled people to Top 8. Because we don't have the starting data we don't know whether it was popularity or straight up power that made it happen. From consequent results though we can see that it might have been popularity (and some skilled pilots).
2. It was a very good meta call.
3. It was something very new that had signs of viability and also resembled Twin.

I'm going to go with 1 and 3 being true. Outside of that specific period where Nahiri was held as the 2nd coming of Twin, Jeskai has almost 0, if not literally 0, relevant results.

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
The difference is that the gap between Tier 1 and Tier 2 wasn't so huge back then. I was playing Grixis freaking Control and having a fair amount of success, a friend of mine Merfolk, some other guys had minor success with 8rack and other lower tier decks.
While the gap between T1 and T2 was smaller, the fact that Grixis Control was T1 has nothing to do with this. Grixis Control was a meta call and a confluence of recent printings drew more people to the deck. It was good because Tasigur, Angler and K-Command made the deck EXTREMELY potent against Twin and some of the top decks of that summer. After the summer Grixis fell below T1 and Twin rose up again.
TheBoulderer wrote:
4 years ago
And yes, Jeskai control does completely obliterate aggro decks (or did back then, at least). Lightning Helix is a helluva card vs Humans/Burn/Zoo etc. Those decks ran 4Path, 6-8 Bolt/Helix AND 1-3 Verdicts, for god's sake :D
I'm not denying that it does, but those removals/burns and Verdicts are VERY bad in the mirror or against Big Mana or Combo, so from a straight up risk assessment evaluation, it's better to lose some percentage points against those creature decks and have MASSIVE gains against combo/big mana and the mirror.
FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
But guess what? Modern has gotten stronger. When someone actively considers a way to attack, they can't. Attacking it is a losing proposition. Can you attack Deathrite Shaman? Yes, you can with removal, which has been much weaker in Modern ever since 2016. I personally don't see Deathrite Shaman doing anything more busted than Emry, Lurker of the Loch. I've done Engineered Explosives for 4 turns straight when my opponent didn't have ... removal. Deathrite Shaman is played in many decks. This is very true. It is a fair card. There is no strategy trying to win the game before turn 4 that would utilize Deathrite Shaman. That is the truth of the matter.
While it Modern has gotten stronger, I don't see them ever unbanning DRS. In your example, DRS straight up wins, since it can remove the card that Emry targets in the yard, while also clocking the opponent. DRS also usually comes one turn earlier than Emry, so the Emry player may not ever get to get value out of her. Klothys has to do it on your main phase for example.

I'd say that DRS is a fair card in the VERY broad term of the word, in that it was played in (mostly) fair decks like Zoo, BGx etc.

It does way too much for its cost, so it doesn't make it a fair card in my eyes.
TheBoulderer wrote:
4 years ago
Btw, Blood Moon also used to be a check on greedy 3c mana bases. That check is also lost. Blue Moon is gone because of Astrolabe.
Blood Moon is still good against Snow mana bases, it's just not THAT effective anymore. I've frequently side in Blood Moon against UW control, especially on the play, because even with their 8 basics, you'd still make them stumble. Yes, there are draws that the Snow decks will never care for it, but it also happened when I played against UW control. You need Blood Moon to make them stumble and rid that to victory, not to completely lock them out.
TheBoulderer wrote:
4 years ago
Maybe baby steps are the way to go. I'm hoping Veil of Summer is axed very soon, then we can see what that does, and how Ikoria influences the format. I still think Astrolabe is too good. While the comparison with DRS doesn't really work, Astrolabe draws a card, and the importance of that simply cannot be overstated. It does such a massive amount for consistency. Smoothing out draws as well as fixing mana AND being a permanent of a relevant type is a lot of utility.
While I'm not denying the power and effectiveness of Astrolabe, DRS's abilities are worth way more than one card. AA doesn't hate out aggro and GY decks. It doesn't ramp. It isn't a clock. It's consistency tool, which yes have proven bannable in the past, but at the moment its benefits far outweigh the problems it presents.
TheBoulderer wrote:
4 years ago
To be honest, I'd like to se Veil go, Astrolabe go AND big mana to be nerfed in some way, but I realize my perspective is heavily influenced by what I play (Grixis Control, there you go). As I guess are most people's opinions, understandably.
That requires a sequence of bannings that I don't think Modern can handle at the moment. That, and I also think Big Mana is in line with the other T1 decks after the ban of OUaT.

Also, you see Astrolabe as a bigger threat than T3feri? I'd even put him over Veil. Cut those two and you both decrease the power of UWx snow decks and big mana. Plus you get DS back in the mix that now can interact on their opponents turn and Thoughtseize decks are relevant again.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Nahiri was not a good deck. It just wasn't. Teferi (and his friend Search for Azcanta) was actual truth. Nahiri was little better than Blue Moon.

I played all 3 way too much.
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Aaron Forsythes analysis that UWx was doing well during the days of KCI (in a time which was totally acceptable to run main deck RIP and Stony Silence) shows his utter disconnect from reality and ability to understand even the basic make-up of a Modern metagame. He and Blake Rasmussen are so far removed from the players of these formats, it's honestly terrifying. The only reason UWx is good now is because of broken green cards and a mana-fixing, cantripping artifact.

In other news, this popped up on my feed today:
That was a wonderful video. I literally got goose bumps at certain parts. I did not know that the Professor was such an avid Modern fan. I always assumed he was more into Commander or some other casual (in my mind) format.

His own LGS going from 40-50 people to 12 and then when he was the only one for Modern was really wild. My LGS went from 60 players to around 32-36 and then declined until our LGS went bankrupt (non related reasons).

Even the conversation about War of the Spark Planeswalkers between him and Pleasant Kenobi - the Professor said that they should never have had static abilities. Pleasant Kenobi said that it should have been for both players. Prison type stuff is probably more acceptable for Pleasant because he is a Legacy D and T player. For the Professor, he realizes that nowadays, Prison is kind of an outdated archetype and one of the most hated. People would rather die on turn 1 to some mumbo jumbo than be under a HARD lock for the whole game, unable to do anything. The Professor ... gets it. Prison nowadays is better done as a soft lock because even if some effect is universal, every Magic player in the world knows it's not going to be universal in use. For example, decks that play Smallpox don't play creatures and don't need many lands in play, while also not needing any cards in hand at some point. They break the symmetry.

I always respected the Professor, but now I see him more like "one of us." He is someone who would love for Modern to continue and be the best that it can possibly be. You can't fault a man for that.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Tzoulis wrote:
4 years ago
Right, I'd forgotten about Nahiri Jeskai...
You forgot about it because the deck was total trash, and anyone ever telling you otherwise is a snake-oil salesman or SCG employee. I paid nearly $100 for a playset of Nahiri because I so desperately wanted something remotely close to what I had lost. But the deck is not, and was not, ever good. It had a few "gotcha" breakout moments before people realized what was up, and then it fell to pieces, never to be relevant again. UW (and really Uxx) remained irrelevant for years until nearly a dozen new cards were introduced to make it playable. And as I said earlier, the only thing that makes it playable today is broken green cards and broken artifacts. It's ironic that all I want to play is a Snapcaster Cryptic deck (really, a Snap/Bolt deck, but those days are long gone), and Snapcaster Mage is hilariously the worst card in Bant Snow most of the time.

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Post by Aazadan » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Modern is dying because of bad design decisions
So I want to comment on this, sorry for the late response but I've been busier than normal lately (due to my work, the COVID issues mean I'm working more, not less like most people). I read last week, or maybe the week before an article by Sam Black about his recent time at Wizards. As I've said in some previous posts I've done game dev work before, as have a good number of people I know. There was a comment in his article that seemed like something of a throwaway line that caught my eye. Maybe others have caught this too, but I've been busy so I could have easily missed it. Other game devs I know also latched onto it.

Essentially, he said that while they were playing cards, every single card was pushed to the brink of what could in some way be considered printable. The logic behind this was that if you played cards at their strongest and then only reduced cards in power, nothing could slip through the cracks that was too strong. What's interesting about this approach is that it runs completely counter to common development wisdom. Weak content is always safe, and what might be balanced in your curated environment doesn't transfer well outside of an environment with artificial limitations placed on it. In Magic terms, cards that play fine in Standard suddenly might not transition well to Modern or Legacy because the resources or lack of resources that kept them balanced are no longer an issue.

In general game development, you make things weak because even if things release weak they can always be buffed later and players handle buffs much better than nerfs even if things wind up in the same place in the end. Magic doesn't really let us see pre release stats, but we all feel bans which are the nerfs in Magic. Why this really caught my eye though, is according to interviews with other ex developers, this is not the strategy they used to use.

I'm unclear on when they changed their approach, but given that it seems to be an established process at this point going by what Sam Black said, I suspect it has been in use for a while. I'm now seriously wondering if this approach is what lead to 2019, and perhaps some of the balance problems prior to that.

I would bet good money on this being the root cause of the games recent balance issues.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

There is a reason (mistaken as it is/was) that people thought only '1 or 2 cards from a set' ever made it to Modern. When set's where properly designed, we were able to retain identity within the format.

When cards are absolutely busted across an an entire set, we ended up with Oko running through 4+ formats and needing to be banned in all of them.

I can 100% accept that their design method changed, and is flawed, and if we can read the tea leaves from Sam's twitter, 2020 and beyond will be just as rough.
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Post by TheBoulderer » 4 years ago

Tzoulis wrote:
4 years ago
While I'm not denying the power and effectiveness of Astrolabe, DRS's abilities are worth way more than one card. AA doesn't hate out aggro and GY decks. It doesn't ramp. It isn't a clock. It's consistency tool, which yes have proven bannable in the past, but at the moment its benefits far outweigh the problems it presents.
TheBoulderer wrote:
4 years ago
To be honest, I'd like to se Veil go, Astrolabe go AND big mana to be nerfed in some way, but I realize my perspective is heavily influenced by what I play (Grixis Control, there you go). As I guess are most people's opinions, understandably.
That requires a sequence of bannings that I don't think Modern can handle at the moment. That, and I also think Big Mana is in line with the other T1 decks after the ban of OUaT.

Also, you see Astrolabe as a bigger threat than T3feri? I'd even put him over Veil. Cut those two and you both decrease the power of UWx snow decks and big mana. Plus you get DS back in the mix that now can interact on their opponents turn and Thoughtseize decks are relevant again.
This is just personal experience, but even though I'm running a predominantly blue deck heavily relying on counterspells, I have found T3feri somwhat unproblematic to face. It's not hard to pressure it with Grixis control. Respond with a flashed-in snap, make them decide wether to tick it up so i can swing at it with Snap and bolt it or tick down to bounce my snap and draw, in which case i can also bolt it. I realize a lot of blue decks these days dont have those plays available. So I can't speak to wether T3feri is that bad, but I do know that Veil of Summer shuts me down WAY harder than T3feri.

As I've said, those ban "wishes" were from a purely subjective point of view, but I'll never stop calling for a Veil ban, and I think we're in agreement there.

Concerning DRS: I have to disclose that I didn't play modern in DRS times (I've watched some coverage from that time though). I joined right after it's ban. DRS sure was an "answer it or lose" card. But looking at Astrolabe, you get your "draw a card" 100% of the time. DRS could run away with the game, but also get bolted (or pushed, these days) and be a clean 1for1. And going fetch-DRS into t2 Lily is a crazy, crazy play. So I guess it was a card with a lower bottom and higher ceiling than Astrolabe is now. But I mean, A THIRD of modern decks are on 4x Astrolabe. That says something about the card.

To sum up my personal view and leave it at that for now: 1) Veil has to go, and I feel most people agree there, 2) Astrolabe is also too good and shouldn't be a requirement to push "fair" decks to be good enough to compete with big mana (though I at least understand arguments against a ban), and 3) big mana (especially Titan) got too many toys in the last sets, though I don't really know how to approach that problem. A map ban eg would do nothing to nerf Titan decks and would probably semi-kill GTron. With Amulet Titan, the power is now kind of evenly distributed among several cards... but a Veil ban would take away unbeatable protection from Big Mana, which would be a very good start.

@gkourou damn if i was ever to branch out, those Jeskai Control lists would have been my first choice. They were super sweet. It's very informative how insanely bad they seem compared to what is tier 1 now. I'm baffled by that, because at that time, they were a total house (Grixis Control was not a good choice during that whole time, but it did, and still does, have a very good matchup vs Jeskai and UW Control).

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

As I said, the Teferi/Search build was legit, but it was also mostly a meta call as it did have actual game against Humans/Spirits.

Once it was asked of to also play Field of Ruin, it died off, the mana base simply could not support it.

That said, the Euro meta is/was control leaning. The NA/Online meta did not support the same conclusion that UWR was a top deck, it was a popular one at the time, because the people were starved for a Snapcaster deck.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Yeah, I mean I mean...if your version of aggro is open to other approaches to the archetype.

Dredge, Burn, Prowess, Humans? Are they all unplayable? The problem is (to me) that if you play UWR into that, you can do fine, but you absolutely will get punked by Tron/Titan/Snow. So the answer is, play the deck that is interactive, and can beat or at least hang with the top of the format, and thats a Snow build.

The problem is that Tier 1 is simply too far from T2 now. Its not remotely close and the only way to get it under control is ban's, and people are tired of it.

I'm giving up and pulling out Ponza. I just cant lose to Tron anymore, and its a cheap deck.

We disagreed in the past, but I wasnt wrong. Once UWR was unplayable, you played to the GY, or you played a Tron/Titan deck, or you lost, Modern was the 'GY Format'. Now its more diverse, but the power levels are so out of line that you are essentially giving up if you dont play the top decks.
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Post by iTaLenTZ » 4 years ago

I haven't played Modern since January and can't be bothered by it any more. I don't like the banning of OUaT because others like Astrolabe and Veil got to stay. As long as those cards remain legal I don't see myself playing Modern. My deck is now unplayable because it lost OUaT but the other cards that are just as broken or more get a free pass. So the format is now: You either play Astrolabe.deck or you play Bigmana. I am not interested in either and like people said above, the powerlevel of these decks is so far ahead of the rest its just pointless to attend any tourney if you are not playing a tier 1 deck.

The solution is not more powercreep to push some tier 2 decks to tier 1 but to eliminate the top of the pyramid thus goodbye Astrolabe and Veil. Veil is completely unacceptable by any standards and should have been banned months ago.

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Post by Ed06288 » 4 years ago

i'm surprised there's so much discussion on modern. there's no paper events anyway.

people that are burned by bannings or powercreep need to build more deck cores while they are cheap. otherwise you lose interest in your deck or get hit by a ban.
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Post by Tzoulis » 4 years ago

@gkourou I searched mtgtop8 for both Jeskai and UW (and Azorius) control for the periods 1/1/2018 to 1/1/2019 and same starting date to 2020. In the first period there are only 8 Jeskai Control decks, while in the second (overlapping) there are 226. A marked increase to be sure. Because as @idSurge said, Teferi and Azcanta helped.

Azorius on the other hand had for the first period 8 Azorius and 227 for UW Control, while for the second period (again overlapping) 594 UW Control lists and 46 for Azorius.

For reference:

Jund: (includes shadow decks) 1st period: 262, 2nd period: 586,
Tron: (all versions) 1st period: 463, 2nd period: 1251.
Humans: 1st period: 470, 2nd period 867.
Spirits: 1st Period: 100, 2nd 176.
Burn: 1st Period: 314, 2nd: 793.

In what universe were Jeskai control deck T1, when they had one third the lists of UW control? And were less effective than the rest of the then T1?

It was clearly a T2 deck, and very good in specific metas. The fact that it top 8'd a few events changes only part of my evaluation. It was clearly a T2 deck and a good option for specific metas. UW was FAR superior and had triple the presence of Jeskai. So yeah, if you wanted to win in an open field, Jeskai Control wasn't (that) viable. You'd go with UW control.
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
If a metacall reason urges you to go to the jeskai control route, this means the metagame is healthy though. Having Humans and spirits kind of decks led to one of the good modern eras.
While I won't argue that that period wasn't great, I'll argue that the meta actively didn't call or pushed you to Jeskai Control. UW was still better (as evidenced by the above numbers). Terminus was better against Humans and especially better against Spirits than Verdict. UW could also further diversify its wrath suite with 3-4 Terminus, 1 Verdict, 1 Settle, where Jeskai could only play Settle and Verdict.

On top of that Big Mana decks were very popular during that era (Titan decks: 129 1st period, 416 2nd period plus the numbers for Tron) and UW Control was WAY better than Azorius, because it could play more relevant spells (see counters) and 4 Field of Ruins. Also, contrary to popular belief, UW was better than Jeskai against Burn. Mostly because UW shocked less and could play 2-3 Timely if it chose to in the main.

All of that point to a deck which was very good in very specific metas and only reached T2 never T1. If you wanted to win it wasn't really viable.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Dude OUaT was way more broken. Veil is only broken if you choose to try and interact, and Astrolabe...well whatever we seem to be accepting it as the price of a semi-diverse format.

OUaT was a mistake that had no business seeing print.
OUaT.JPG
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FoodChainGoblins
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

iTaLenTZ wrote:
4 years ago
I haven't played Modern since January and can't be bothered by it any more. I don't like the banning of OUaT because others like Astrolabe and Veil got to stay. As long as those cards remain legal I don't see myself playing Modern. My deck is now unplayable because it lost OUaT but the other cards that are just as broken or more get a free pass. So the format is now: You either play Astrolabe.deck or you play Bigmana. I am not interested in either and like people said above, the powerlevel of these decks is so far ahead of the rest its just pointless to attend any tourney if you are not playing a tier 1 deck.

The solution is not more powercreep to push some tier 2 decks to tier 1 but to eliminate the top of the pyramid thus goodbye Astrolabe and Veil. Veil is completely unacceptable by any standards and should have been banned months ago.
I will say one thing. You were right about a banning on OUaT not having that good of an effect on Modern diversity. Amulet got knocked from 1st to top 5, while other decks just died (Tier 3 or not played atm). I didn't realize it would be that bad, but it is emblematic of the problems of Modern unfortunately.

I believe that when they figure out what to do to make Modern better, something from one of my favorite decks, Neobrand, should also be banned. That kind of stuff is only acceptable when other unacceptable stuff is also going on.

*After watching the Professor's latest video, I am convinced that Hasbro and WotC have been cutting costs by not having enough people for Research and Development. I am going to assume that they figure, "there's too many formats and there's too many cards, we can't possibly make things balanced." Then they print the biggest Battlecruiser card that they can to sell packs and let the chips fall where they may. I agree with the Prof when he says what gets people's butts in the seats are when formats are balanced. And I am talking about Standard here as well. WotC would have to pay a team of people, like some of whom they already hired - Paul Cheon, Tom Ross, and Michael Majors to test for formats like Pioneer and Modern. Or even hire some people that can test better for Standard. It takes money to make money and I think this will make more money for WotC long term than shortcutting things by just printing big Timmy cards to sell packs.

But then maybe their strategic long term move is just to make everything digital. Costs are cut to nearly 0 and there's no overhead.
Last edited by FoodChainGoblins 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
Standard - Will pick up what's good when paper starts
Pre Modern - Do not own anymore
Pioneer - DEAD
Modern - Jund Sacrifice, Amulet, Elementals, Trollementals, BR Asmo/Goryo's, Yawmoth Chord
Legacy - No more cards, will rebuy Sneak Show when I can
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Ed06288
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Post by Ed06288 » 4 years ago

e-tron and amulet are still fine decks to play even after OUAT banning

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drmarkb
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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

Can anyone explain why UG seems so pushed?
The Titan, Oko and the stuff like Krasis seem determined to push the color combo for Standard, some of that was bound to (and did) make it into Modern,Legacy etc. When it isn't ug it's just G with veil and ouat.
I know they have spent five years pushing it in draft, it was one of the under drafted combos. What is the obsession with U and G for constructed?

Is there any article on this? We know why white is garbage- white is a prison color for constructed (hate bear or otherwise) and too many people don't get how necessary good prison options are for a format. I still can't fathom what data they have that has driven them towards g and u.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
WotC would have to pay a team of people, like some of whom they already hired - Paul Cheon, Tom Ross, and Michael Majors to test for formats like Pioneer and Modern. Or even hire some people that can test better for Standard. It takes money to make money and I think this will make more money for WotC long term than shortcutting things by just printing big Timmy cards to sell packs.
Tom Ross was on the MH team. I dont believe the answer lies here, in Testing.

The answer lies in.

1. Setting your 'rate' on cards, and not breaking it without VERY careful considering. We went from Theros, to Oath of the Gatewatch, without breaking the format really, though I guess there was Treasure Cruise...

August 12, 2011 - Modern is codified.
September 27, 2013 - Theros, everything is fine, really!
September 20, 2014 - Treasure Cruise is a problem...but a painless ban.
January 22, 2016 - Oath, aka Eldrazi Ruin Modern.
September 30, 2016 - Kaladesh, aka Dredge is busted. We also get the tool's for KCI to break.
October 5, 2018 - Guilds of Rav, aka 'Caw Caw, Modern is a GY Format now!'
June 14, 2019 - Horizons, aka 'Oops, you are done here.' (Hog, Urza, Yawg, Astro!)
October 4, 2019 - Throne, aka 'Oko Ruins Magic the Gathering' and OUaT I suppose.
January 24, 2020 - Theros v 2, aka 'Uro says, let us Midrange!'

2. Banning cards that should not exist!

Look at the listing above. Modern could have been curated and saved from itself EASILY if Wizards had simply banned what needed to be, or recognized that they bloated above rate design's simply didnt need to be pushed like this.

Repeat it to yourselves, WIZARDS DOES NOT TEST TO A COMPETITIVE STANDARD OF PLAY.

It's not about testing. You know what its about?

Variance keeps the game under control. If you dont have access to your busted cards all the time, the game wont break.
The Color Pie keeps decks from 'always had it', but guess what?
THE MANA SYSTEM. Greedy? Well you could be punished, or should be.

So how do we wrap this all up?

Wizards needs to.

1. Get back to the basics. Dominaria was great for a reason. Pull back the development reigns and roll back the power LEAP that is going on.
2. Variance matters. Get all this hand smoothing, free designs, and the %$#%$#% LONDON MULLIGAN out of the game. Cantrips, not free, should be the only type of scrying going on with regularity.
3. Punish greedy mana. If its not Modern, with Fetches, you pretty much should have no business playing 3 colors in anything but a Ravnica block.
4. Clean up the mistakes. Unless this is the new normal for Modern, your going to have to ban some of this %$#%.

I saw Uroza called 'Mistake Midrange' the other day, and laughed out loud, because its fundamentally true. You can literally just build decks that are busted designs from 2019/2020, and win with it.

UG is busted now, because it was a nothing design pair before. Once they decided that Green could do literally everything, you pair that with historically the best mono Color, and its gonna break.
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

drmarkb wrote:
4 years ago
Can anyone explain why UG seems so pushed?
The Titan, Oko and the stuff like Krasis seem determined to push the color combo for Standard, some of that was bound to (and did) make it into Modern,Legacy etc. When it isn't ug it's just G with veil and ouat.
I know they have spent five years pushing it in draft, it was one of the under drafted combos. What is the obsession with U and G for constructed?

Is there any article on this? We know why white is garbage- white is a prison color for constructed (hate bear or otherwise) and too many people don't get how necessary good prison options are for a format. I still can't fathom what data they have that has driven them towards g and u.
I don't think there is something written anywhere about it. All we can do is just create certain theories as to why it has become so.

My theory is this - players have complained for many years about how weak the color combination that is Simic is. I personally feel that there are a lot of people with close ties to WotC who are Simic lovers. Sure, there has been complaints about other color combinations as well, but none as much as Simic and one other one (which is eluding me right now). So, WotC executives examine this and say, "okay, we're gonna stuff it down their throats. We are going to see how much money these Simic lovers can make us. We will force everyone in every format ever to have to play Simic to be competitive. Who's got ideas?" Employees scramble to make stuff to break Simic and are rewarded when it the cards are successful to what their boss wanted.

*Just remembered the other 2 color combination that hasn't seen many good cards recently - Orzhov (BW).
Last edited by FoodChainGoblins 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
Standard - Will pick up what's good when paper starts
Pre Modern - Do not own anymore
Pioneer - DEAD
Modern - Jund Sacrifice, Amulet, Elementals, Trollementals, BR Asmo/Goryo's, Yawmoth Chord
Legacy - No more cards, will rebuy Sneak Show when I can
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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idSurge
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

The other bad pair was UB, its been pushed too.
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
The other bad pair was UB, its been pushed too.
UB, I can understand though. I am a UB player and have been for a long time. It was pushed a lot during the Ravnica years, both before, and then after. So I understand that we already had our cake at that time and ate it too. I know that many players haven't played that far back, so they missed it. But players like myself would see our deck be the best deck bar none for many years in a row.

I do think that WotC should revisit that color combination, as it has been a long time ago and there are millions of newer players. But then every once in a while, they make a the Scarab God card to make me wonder.
Standard - Will pick up what's good when paper starts
Pre Modern - Do not own anymore
Pioneer - DEAD
Modern - Jund Sacrifice, Amulet, Elementals, Trollementals, BR Asmo/Goryo's, Yawmoth Chord
Legacy - No more cards, will rebuy Sneak Show when I can
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Ed06288
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Post by Ed06288 » 4 years ago

why don't the people who like u/w control just move to bant snowblade?

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